Snow days causes students to swivel to e-learning

In 2019, the district passed an e-learning policy in place of snow days. That policy allows for up to two days canceled due to poor weather, after which e-learning kicks in. And Forest Lake area students saw the beginning of that policy early this year.

“It’s kind of a combination of the old traditional snow day ... [and] on the third day or beyond, for us, it’s an e-learning day,” Superintendent Steve Massey said. 

The Forest Lake district builds in two “extra” days into the calendar, in case of poor weather, to ensure students meet the Minnesota education requirement that they receive 165 instructional days and in-person hour requirements per grade level throughout a school year.

“If we cancel two days, we would still meet the state requirement,” Massey explained. 

Instead of canceling more than two days of school due to weather and planning to make it up later in the year, the district is allotted five e-learning days to bridge the gaps and meet requirements. 

“In the past without e-learning, if we got to the third day, we’re making up days. And those days are made up by canceling a professional development day in the spring, [or] maybe Good Friday, as a day off gets converted to a school day,” Massey explained. 

This transition to use e-learning days when weather doesn’t permit in-person learning did not happen as a result of the pandemic. Rather it’s a result of the 2018-2019 school year when there were more than five inclement weather days and students in districts across the state didn’t reach the required 165 learning days. 

“That year, due to the number of cancellations, most districts were at risk of falling short of that requirement. So in that year the governor exempted those cold days and simply counted them as instructional days,” Massey said. 

The exception for the amount of canceled days in the 2018-2019 school year wasn’t something the Legislature planned to do again and opted toward the e-learning model to avoid this problem in the future.

This new policy hadn’t been utilized at the district until this year on Wednesday, Jan. 4, when the state was impacted by the latest snowstorm, with some areas, like Forest Lake, seeing more than a foot of snow. 

The previous two winters, learning models had already shifted to a virtual platform to get schools and students through the pandemic.

A post-pandemic e-learning day

When the Minnesota Legislature approved this e-learning shift, there weren’t the studies or data points we have now about  learning loss from online learning, but Massey said that keeping children engaged in what would otherwise be a day off is a better option.

“I believe that kids learn best when they’re in a classroom with their teacher. When we can’t be in the classroom because of inclement weather, we want to keep kids engaged in learning,” Massey said. 

Following the pandemic, standardized test scores indicated a correlation between learning loss and a lack of in-person instruction. However, Massey said one e-learning day sandwiched between in-person learning likely isn’t as harmful to learning.

“It’s one thing to bridge from Tuesday to Thursday with ‘Make sure you’re doing work on your paper, make sure you’re doing your reading.’ … That’s different than weeks of distance learning where the entire unit is done with remote learning,” Massey explained. 

E-learning is a learning model in which students will find materials or instructions online and complete the tasks independently. Teachers will be available to help students if needed, but they will not conduct virtual classes on the e-learning days. 

“The lessons just continue and teachers often have a day or two, or some days, planned in advance,” Massey explained.  

E-learning days will look different for primary and secondary students.

Elementary students will choose from a list of activities to complete for each subject: math, reading, writing, science/social and a special class like art or physical education. Students in pre-school to sixth grade will need a parent or guardian signature to prove they completed five of the allotted tasks during the e-learning day.  

“The idea is that elementary kids are choosing activities that account for instructional days at the elementary level,” Massey said.

Secondary students will receive materials and instructions from their teachers via their Canvas Learning Management System accounts. 

“That’s the classroom website … where teachers, all year long, are posting assessments, are posting assignments, linking videos,” Massey said. 

Attendance for secondary students are noted by simply completing the assignments for that day online. If a student doesn’t participate in an e-learning days, it counts as an absence.

There are potentially four more e-learning days approved by the state for the remainder of the school year. E-learning days will continue after that, but in-person hours will still have to be made up.